


Transition

by turingtestflunker



Series: Checks and Balances [7]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: Anal Fingering, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Boss/Employee Relationship, Erectile Dysfunction, Eroticized Erectile Dysfunction, M/M, Magical Healing Cock, Multi, Rough Sex, Safer Sex, Verbal Humiliation, except not because
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 20:29:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8504317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turingtestflunker/pseuds/turingtestflunker
Summary: Josh is an evil genius with the emotional maturity of a small child. Matt is going to be President of the United States. God help them. Companion piece to the episode of the same name.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, was this a long time in the making! Happy election day, ya'll. Please enjoy this meditation on the addictive futility of public service/kinky porn fic.

_Everest is for wimps._ Santos wasn't really joking when he said it, but it seems truer every day. It's like a never ending series of false summits. Election night was like that, for a few magic hours. The odd space between the end of the campaign and the beginning of the transition. He and Helen made slow exhausted love on the hotel room bed, and fell asleep whispering to each other about their children. Matt remembers wondering distantly where Josh was, in the moment before he fell asleep.

They slept like the dead. It was almost noon before someone came to wake them: he and Helen weren't the only ones who got their first eight hours of sleep in a long time that night.

Being woken up by a phone call had stopped behind jarring a long time ago. Santos opened his eyes, sat halfway up in bed, picked up the phone, thanked the staffer, and hung up again all in a thoughtless daze. He looked over at Helen. She was still asleep, head half buried under a pillow. Santos looked at his wife, looked at the sunlight streaming in through the window, closed his eyes and felt the thoughts rush back into his head. He realized he was just getting started. Another false summit, another peak in the distance, even more compelling than the last.

During the transition, Helen has taken to reading Camus.

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” she'll say, and more often than not Donna Moss will be standing beside her, nodding knowingly.

Santos takes another swig of coffee and blinks rapidly until he can refocus on the tiny typed words in the oversized binder on his oversized desk in his almost comically oversized office. Either he's going to have to get reading glasses, or they're going to have to start making a large print version of these things.

He shakes his head and mutters, “...one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Once, early on a bitter cold January morning in a beat down little diner in Iowa, Matt asked Josh if campaigning ever got easier. Josh laughed at him, profusely, and told him that it _never_ got easier; not during the campaign and certainly not after. At the time, what struck Santos more than anything else was Josh's certainty that he would win. That, somewhere, in Josh's mind, there was a path connecting that sad little diner and their sad little campaign to the White House. Matt thinks he understands better now.

Thankfully, Santos doesn't have much time to indulge these sorts of philosophical thoughts. There's just not enough room in his brain. He's got a prickly ex-opponent to mollify; he swears Vinick must sleep with one eye open, for all the fretting about tricks and plots he does. He'll be a great Secretary of State. World War III is trying to break out in Kazakhstan, which is devastatingly inconvenient, and last but not least he's got an administration to staff.

Naive optimist that he was, Santos had thought this part would be relatively easy. Keep the career civil servants and some people from the last administration, tap some think tanks, hand out a bunch of jobs to people from the campaign, and call it done. Oh _no_.

Josh slouches back into the office, weighed down by another stack of giant binders.

Santos sighs, “You're going to throw your back out like that.”

Josh looks at him blankly, “Have you finished going through that yet? I've got another few resumes for you.”

Santos raises his eyebrows, knowing that Josh's idea of 'a few resumes’ does not resemble any reasonable person’s definition of that phrase.

“You know Josh, we _do_ have a Head of Transition,” he says mildly.

“Believe it or not, I do know that, sir.” Josh says, “And believe me, she’s busy. _This_ is just the stuff you need to look at personally.”

“Why?” Santos asks, exasperated, “We’re looking at under-deputy assistant secretaries of the Department of Agriculture! History is not going to remember me for who I put in charge of inspecting lunch meat!”

Josh goes very still, “There’s a reason for the things I do, you know”

“Feel like sharing?” Santos asks.

Josh closes his eyes tightly, as if he can banish his obviously building headache.

The floodgates open, “Transitions are really fucking complicated, there are thousands of people, all of whose careers are going to be turned upside down by who you ‘put in charge of inspecting lunch meat’” he delivers the quote with terrible scorn, “A cabinet agency job can set someone new up to run for office later on, or get some annoying old person out of the way for good. That shit adds up, and twenty years later people like President Bartlet tell stories around the dinner table about how if they had only hired whoever, so and so would never have done so and so or whatever, because people like _me_ don’t pay enough attention to this stuff, because we’re too busy getting into random, pointless, fucking dick measuring contests and fights with our girlfriends!”

Santos is silent for a moment. His first thought is, _Donna Moss is Josh’s girlfriend now?_

His second thought is, “What the hell is wrong with you?” and he’s not quite able to resist saying it out loud.

Josh crumples immediately, “I- I don’t know. There’s just a lot, a lot of- nevermind, it doesn’t matter.”

Matt feels like the world’s biggest horse’s behind.

“I um- I’ll just go, we can- I can take care of it later” Josh says, getting up to go.

Matt stands up, crosses the distance between them in three long steps and draws his… draws Josh into tight hug.

“We’re hugging now?” Josh asks weakly.

“Yeah, we’re hugging” Matt says.

“Ok. Hugging is good” Josh mumbles, and to Matt’s relief he seems to mean it.

“I’m sorry,” Matt says.

“ _You’re_ sorry?” Josh asks, incredulously.

“Yeah I am. I think I get what you’re trying to do now” Matt says, “Have I ever told you that you’re an evil genius?”

“I prefer ‘devious mastermind’” Josh says, and this is officially way, way too long for a President Elect to be hugging his future Chief of Staff.

So far as Matt can tell, neither of them care. Josh rests his head on Matt’s shoulder. Matt hesitates for a moment, then kisses Josh on the side of the head. Josh melts.

“How long has it been?” Matt asks quietly.

“Too fucking long” Josh groans. The last time was Cleveland. They don’t talk about Cleveland.

“Hmm” Matt nibbles Josh’s ear, less than gently, “I’m sorry about that, too.”

“I just yelled at you for no good reason, and now we’re hugging and _you're_ apologizing to _me._ ” Josh observes.

If Matt spent a hundred years explaining, Josh wouldn’t get it.

“I’m an unpredictable man,” he says, instead.

“You can say that again,” Josh says wistfully.

He tucks his head into the crook of Matt’s shoulder, pushes their bodies closer. Matt can feel Josh getting hard against his thigh.

“I’m sorry, I just-” he starts, but Matt cuts him off.

“Don’t be” he says, and holds Josh tighter. He presses his leg against Josh’s dick, enjoys his helpless, involuntary rutting.

Josh looks up at him, “This is the worst idea ever.”

“I know,” Matt says.

Josh nods absently and reaches down to put his hand on Matt’s cock, which is soft. It stays that way. Being touched feels good, but no food, no sleep, too much caffeine and the literal weight of the world on your shoulders are not exactly the recipe for a raging libido. He’s starting to envy Josh his ability to get off on geopolitical crisis.

“You’re not- I mean, _why?_ ” Josh asks, and Matt’s heart breaks a little.

It’s another one of those things he knows he can’t _make_ Josh understand, so he just says “I think you need it.”

Josh blushes and hides his face in the crook of Matt’s neck, “I don’t… you don’t have to…”

“I _like_ that you need it” Matt whispers.

Josh groans. Matt backs him up against the desk and takes another kiss.

“Do you want me to make you?” he asks carefully.

Josh nods emphatically. Matt spins him around and shoves him down hard by the scruff of his neck. Josh hits the desk with a satisfying thud. He tugs Josh’s pants down roughly. Josh is completely hard now. Matt slides the palm of his hand down Josh’s erection, painfully light and torturously slow.

“You’re desperate for it, aren’t you?” Matt asks tauntingly, feeling himself fall into the darkness between them.

Josh moans incoherently through gritted teeth. Matt still carries lube and a condom in his pants pocket. A bad (?) habit from the campaign. It’s a bit awkward, putting the condom on his fingers rather than his dick, lubing up with just one hand, but it works well enough. Next time (next time?!) he’ll use gloves. Too quickly, too roughly, he works two fingers into Josh’s ass and watches with satisfaction as he frantically bites his own arm to keep from crying out. Matt uses his free hand to rub soothing circles into Josh’s back.

“Shh” he says, as Josh’s body begins to relax around him, “Isn’t that better?”

Josh nods into the desk. There are tears in his eyes. Matt starts working another finger inside him. Josh takes it in greedily, and then it’s just a matter of finding the little nub inside him and pressing down. Matt has gotten pretty good at that part.

“This is what you need, isn’t it?” Matt asks, rhetorically, “Did your previous bosses ever figure out that all you need to stay in line is something nice and big inside you?”

He splays his fingers inside Josh, for dramatic effect.

"Please, please, please" Josh babbles into the desk.

"Please what?" Matt asks, all faux ignorance.

"Fuck me" Josh groans desperately.

Matt laughs cruelly, "I am fucking you."

"... wanna make you come" Josh mumbles.

"Hmm. I know you do, but that’s not what I want” Matt murmurs, “I want to take you apart, break you open and then walk away like nothing happened”

"Matt..." Josh whimpers.

"The best thing is..." Matt grins viciously, “I know you want it too.”

Josh sobs and bucks against Matt's hand.

"Give it up" Matt hisses, "You can't stop this"

He presses Josh down into the desk more firmly, "We both know how this ends. You're going to come like this, gonna make a mess all over my nice new desk"

Matt hears the breath go out of Josh in a soft little puff, feels him clench around his fingers.

"That's right," Matt soothes cruelly, "Be a good boy and get it over with so I can get back to work"

Josh comes with a choking sob.

Matt pulls out and cleans them both up with the wet wipes Helen stashed in his desk. The whole mess goes into the wastepaper basket, he buries it under another stack of discarded resumes for obscure USDA positions, which is probably as safe as it’s going to get. After that's done, he lays a gentle hand between Josh's shoulder blades as the sobs subside.

"Thought you were going to leave me" Josh says softly.

Matt's heart breaks some more, "I would never do that"

"Yeah" Josh sighs, going limp between Matt's hand and the desk.

There's not enough time. There's never enough time. After nowhere near long enough, Josh stands up and starts fixing his clothes. Matt watches in wonder. He'll never get over how _normal_ Josh looks after.

"Thank you... I _did_ need that" Josh admits grudgingly.

"You know me molesting you isn't a substitute for an actual vacation, right?" Matt asks.

"God, you sound like Sam" Josh complains.

"Sam is right" Matt insists.

"Yeah, sure" Josh says flippantly, "I guess I’m going to have to find someone else to help me go over those Ag applications. Damnit. I swear, half the shit on those things sounds like it was pulled out of someone's ass."

"We're really staffing the USDA before State?" Matt asks.

"Damn right. A, last thing we want is some granny dying of trichinosis in your first hundred days and you getting blamed for it because we forgot to hire a grand pooh-bah of lunch meat inspection" Josh smiles wickedly, “B, I’m trying to turn some legislatures in the big empty square states at the midterm and I’ve got some people whose resumes need padding.”

“Big empty square states? Really, Josh?” Matt says.

“What? Texas isn’t square,” Josh says, as if _that’s_ the problem.

“Seriously, though” Matt says “Vinick is suspicious enough already, we need to give him something to be secretary of. When are we staffing State?”

Josh grimaces, "Fuck if I know. I’ve got a bunch of people playing hard to get, I’ve got to wait and see what’s left over when we finish what we already have on the table and nominating ambassadors is a total clusterfuck and we haven't decided how transparently corrupt we're going to be, yet."

"How about we try _not_ to be corrupt?" Matt asks hopefully.

Josh doesn't actually laugh at him, but it's a close thing, "It's nice to have dreams, sir"

Sir. Matt tries to cover his flinch, but Josh catches it anyway.

"Sorry," he says, "I thought because we were done..."

"No, it's fine," Santos says, with far more confidence than he feels, "Just another thing we have to figure out"

"Yeah," Josh says awkwardly.

"Let me know when you've got a handle on the USDA situation," Santos says, trying his best to sound like the next President of the United States.

Something falls into place. A tension lifts. For the moment, the universe makes sense again.

"Yes, sir" Josh says, "Remember you have a briefing with Chet at 2."

"Got it" Santos says.

Josh nods, "Thank you, Mr. President-Elect"

  
Then he walks out the door. The next day, he books a flight to Hawaii with Donna Moss.

**Author's Note:**

> Matt's kink-negative feelings are his own, not mine. Matt and Josh's pre-scene negotiation continues to be minimally adequate at best. Also, PSA, don't fuck your employees. This occurs after election day, and contains Ominous Foreshadowing (tm), so I'm calling it the first fic of the Donna arc.


End file.
